Jenny Cameron and Lya Fichmann / March 29, 2019

Tears, anger and motivation are popular emotions among some members of the LGBTQ2+ community following a controversial decision at a Vancouver city council meeting.

Vancouver City Council voted to end an annual $34, 000 grant for the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter if they don’t change one of their policies.

The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter accepts women who are born female, for majority of their services, which means transwomen or women who identify as female, are re- directed to other shelters or services.

Anti-violence worker at Vancouver Rape Relief, Karla Gjini, says regardless who calls for help, they do the best they can to keep them as safe as possible.

“As women, as a group, as a class, there’s something different about being born female and we think it is important to be able to organize that way in order to achieve women’s liberation.” – Karla Gjini, anti-violence worker at Vancouver Raper Relief

However, not everyone agrees with the Rape Relief Policy.

Vancouver City Councillor, Sarah Kirby-Young, who voted to cut the funding, says the Vancouver Rape Relief Society publicly stated and, were clear, they would not serve all women and the city has a number of inclusion policies that VRR does not align with.

“When we asked Vancouver Rape Relief questions about what kind of services specifically they provide in general and how many they would provide for trans background and they wouldn’t provide any of them… I think with a lot of other organizations, they are serving women socially, and that’s all we’re asking them to do – to serve women who identify as women.” – Sarah Kirby-Young, Vancouver City Council

She says the council wants to ensure they are giving public dollars and funds to organizations who have the same inclusion policy as they do.

In a statement released by Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter, says they are being discriminated by the Vancouver City Council. The statements says, “many Vancouver City grants are given to organizations that deliver programs and support specific groups of people…none of these groups have been challenged with the demand that they demonstrate ‘accommodation, welcomeness and openness to people of all ages, abilities…and ethnicities.’ Such a demand of these organization would be incomprehensible, as it would contradict the essence and purpose of their work”

When asked about other programs that only accept specific types of people, Kirby-Young, says organizations, like VRR, are meant to help victims of rape who identify as women and to add a trauma onto another trauma by turning them away is heartbreaking.

“It’s common sense that a trans gender woman is a woman.” Morgane Oger, advocate for transgender equality

Below is a list of women shelters in Vancouver that accept trans women:

Kate Booth House

Kate Booth House provides a safe environment for women and their children facing domestic violence, regardless of race, colour, religion, age, and sexual orientation. The shelter focuses on helping women regain control of their lives and self-esteem. They offer advocacy services, counseling, employment resources, and children activities.

Contact: 604.872.7774

Location: confidential

Helping Spirit Lodge

Helping Spirit Lodge opened its doors in 1991, and since then, 80,000 women and children have used their services. The transition house offers food and clothing, educated awareness of family violence prevention, referrals to specialized counselors and treatments, as well as a diverse environment that welcomes women from all types of backgrounds who experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

Contact: 604.872.6649

Location: confidential

Peggy’s Place

Peggy’s Place transition home is designed to help women suffering from mental illness, who have also experienced domestic violence or homelessness. Founded in 1997, the shelter was the first of its kind in Canada. They offer a full caring team, advocacy, mental health, and substance use support services.

Contact: 604.430.5202

Location: confidential

Downtown Eastside Emergency Shelter

The Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre provides emergency shelter for women who are homeless, or at risk of violence. The drop-in night shelter offers meals, counseling, advocacy services and programs to empower members. Their capacity is 150 women per night, and they defend that no women should be turned away.

Contact: 604.715.8480

Location: 412 East Cordova Street

Powell Place

When it opened in 1977, Powell Place was the first women-only shelter in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. They help women facing violence, abuse, poverty, mental illness, and addiction to reach their goals and make their own choices. The shelter provides 52 beds to people who self-identify as a woman, and they also count with advocacy, crisis intervention, classroom and workshop spaces and counseling.

Contact: 604.606.0403

Location: confidential

Atira Women’s Resource Society

Atira Women’s Resource Society supports women and children who face abuse, and their goal is to provide housing, advocacy and education to end all forms of gendered violence. They have a large amount of houses located all around the Lower Mainland, making their services accessible to all women and trans women.

Contact: 604.331.1407

Location: various

RainCity Housing

RainCity Housing provides a range of housing and support services for people from different backgrounds, including battered women, LGBTQ2S+, youth, and indigenous women. They offer temporary shelters, transitional housing and long-term housing too, and their goal is to provide “a home for every person”.

Contact: 604.662.7023

Location: 616 Powell Street

WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre

Founded in 1982, WAVAW’s goal is to create a future free from sexualized violence. They provide support services to survivors of sexualized violence who have experiences of gender marginalization, including cics, trans women, and non-binary people. They offer a 24-hour crisis line, hospital accompaniment, counseling and more. Over 48,000 crisis calls are answered each year.

Contact: 604.255.6344

Location: confidential

WILL THIS EFFECT WOMENTRANS WOMENNON-BINARYLESBIANSWHO NEED HELP RIGHT NOW?

Gjini says the grant is for a public education area of work and, although it’s not the biggest part of funding – it is an important part of their work.

Morgane Oger, a transgender women and advocate for transgender equality says organizations are free to make their own policies, but the public is free to have standards.

“If organizations chose to ignore human rights they do it at the risk of losing their funding.” – Morgane Oger, advocate for transgender equality

According to Gjini, the grant represents about 2-3% of total funding for the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter. She says part of their public education work aims to help change the way people thinking, which creates social change.

The annual budget for the shelter is just over one million dollars.

Despite the annual $34, 000 loss, Kirby-Young doesn’t think this loss will directly affect those seeking help right now.

“We voted to give the grant for 2019 and we wanted to make sure there wasn’t a void in services so people who are victims of rape have access to those resources and that provided a year for that conversation more fully with Rape Relief to see if they’re willing to change.” – Kirby-Young, Vancouver City Council

LGBTQ2+ advocate, Saphhire Dumaresq, agrees with the city council’s decision. They say trans women are women and they needed to be supported as such.

“I fully support the decision to have their funding cut until they’re able to change their policy and if they can’t they should no longer exist. There are lots of other places to go that fully support the LGBTQ community.” – Sapphire Dumaresq, LGBTQ2+ advocate

Passed in May 2016, Bill C-16 was added to the Canadian Human Right Act to, “add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.” The bill aims to stop discrimination against vulnerable and minority groups, including gender identity and expression, so that, “all individuals will have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have.”

Despite the polarizing sides from the shelter and the city, Josi Victoria Martin, who was born male and now identifies as female, says she is torn about the shelter’s policy.

“I believe in women shelters wholeheartedly, and I don’t believe any funding should be cut from them, but I do believe that the feminist regime should support trans women.” – Josi Victoria Martin, speaker at BCIT Trans Visibility Day

According to Egale Canada Human Rights Trust, “hate crimes against the LGBTQ2 community continue to be the most violent of all minority groups. And as we know from experience, this worsens even further for trans people, non-binary people and especially trans people of colour.”

Martin, Dumaresq, Oger, and Kirby-Young agree trans women are among the most vulnerable group in Canada and should not be turned away from a women’s shelter when they may be at their most vulnerable.

“I believe that if they’re not giving protection to trans women, perhaps having a little funding cut may force them to change their mind and revisit some of the issues of marginalized trans people.” – Josi Victoria Martin, speaker at BCIT Trans Visibility Day

Dumaresq says it makes her angry when people, who have chosen to be their authentic selves, get discriminated against because of that decision.

“It’s a challenging line to walk because they are offering support for women in a very narrow spectrum to get away and support them through trauma, but on the other hand they are excluding so many people based on their gender identity, based on their sexuality, based on the fact they’re sex workers and those people are higher risk to have that rape and sexual assault because we’re vulnerable.” Sapphire Dumaresq, LGBTQ2+ advocate

Oger says it has been a weird tradition of separating men from the women in sexual assault and it is important to note when a trans gender women or trans sexual women is attacked in a sexual assault it is legally recognized to be sexual assault against a female.

“Sexual assault of people should be dealt with the basis of what happened as a sexual assault.” – Morgane Oger, advocate for transgender equality

Below is a timeline of some of the pivotal events in Canada from 2000 to 2019.

“We believe that being a women if a combination of biology and social conditioning.”

THE BIGGER PICTURE

The Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s shelter opened their doors in the 1970’s. Kirby-Young says their policy needs to be updated to keep up with changing social norms and ways of thinking about the trans community. She says women gender equality is in a very different place than it was 25 years ago.

Gjini says the shelter will be there and give women a place to go. She says they believe being a woman is a combination of biology and social conditioning, therefore, women born as females are treated a certain way in the world, which shapes their life experience. And this is the criteria they use to define who they accept into their shelter and services.

Kirby-Young hopes this decision will help start a bigger conversation to help Vancouver make progress and get better at including anyone and everyone in their lives.

“There’s been a lot of negative, really unfortunate language, a lot of hate speech – that was really disappointing to see that and to know we have that level of intolerance or fear, depending on how you look at it in terms of providing service to all people… but if that was a small portion if what somebody in the trans community deal with on a regular basis I think that only strengthens the decision we made on council.” – Sarah Kirby-Young, Vancouver City Council

Martin says she receives online hate from people who are too scared to say their opinions to her face. She hopes with days like, Trans Visibility Day, will encourage people to learn about the trans community and see their humanity and they’re just like everyone else.

“We’re just trying to figure out an authentic happy life in this honest big blue planet.” – Josi Victoria Martin, speaker at BCIT Trans Visibility Day

Dumaresq says education is an important role in making Vancouver an even more inclusive city. For them, an important part of education is teaching people how to use proper pronouns and notice the type of vocabulary used in regular conversation, such as “hey guys.” They say she is aware she walks out the door every day, visibly queer, and she accepts some people still don’t accept that and is prepared for negative feedback.

“We’re people, we deserve to exist, we deserve to be acknowledged we deserve to be respected and learning that gender is a spectrum – it’s not just male and female – there’s so much in-between and learning.” – Sapphire Dumaresq, LGBTQ2+ advocate

Despite rainbow crosswalks and policies in place, Martin says the world has catching up to do to Vancouver, but Vancouver also has work to do.

With tears in her eyes, Martin’s advice is, “go out and meet somebody, it will change your world.”